Here is the recording of Dec. 2nd’s webinar on Preparing a Marketing Strategy for 2011 for office furniture dealers.
Preparing a Marketing Strategy for 2011: Webinar
December 3rd, 2010Slides from Preparing a Marketing Strategy Webinar
December 2nd, 2010This is the slide deck from webinar on how to prepare a marketing strategy for office furniture dealers for the 2011 year. Jason Kirby, the Director of the Office Furniture Marketing Program at eBoost Consulting, is the speaker for the webinar and covers a simple 5 step process to help facilitate the process for office furniture dealers to prepare their 2011 marketing strategy.
New Office Furniture Marketing Webinar
November 8th, 20105 Steps to Prepare an Office Furniture Dealer’s 2011 Marketing Strategy
If you are an office furniture dealer than you DO NOT want to miss this webinar because you will be shown how to prepare a marketing strategy today to see growth tomorrow in 2011.
Don’t have another bad year and learn what you can do to acquire new high margin clients on a consistent basis. This is not your ordinary “look at what services we offer” webinar. Your webinar host, Jason Kirby with eBoost Consulting & http://OfficeFurnitureMarketing.com, will be walking you through how to setup your marketing strategy for a successful 2011.
With so many new resources and tools available to businesses these days it is vital to know which ones will work for an aligned, non-aligned, mid-market or used office furniture dealers. Each dealer has different customers, objectives, strategies, and tools that will deliver results. Jason will explain each tool and why it will work for some dealers and not for others. More importantly you will learn the next steps you need to take to incorporate a high performing marketing strategy for 2011.
2011 is going to be big year and it is up to you to prepare now and reap the benefits of a well-defined marketing strategy.
Attendees will learn how to:
1.) Identify where their target customers are looking for office furniture.
2.) Get the potential customer’s attention.
3.) Build their interest.
4.) Have that potential customer contact you.
5.) Track and monitor results.
Webinar Host:
Jason Kirby, Director of Vertical Operations eBoost Consulting
Jason recently spoke at the OFDA Conference in Florida on how to Turbocharge Sales Through Internet Lead Generation for Office Furniture Dealers. It was a favorite among the attendees and Jason seeks to educate the office furniture industry on the value building efficient marketing systems by leveraging the internet.
This Webinar takes place on December 2, 2010 at 11:00am PST. It will be a 25 minute high impact presentation with 10-15 minutes of Q&A to follow.
Office Furniture Marketing Testimonial from Mark Canavarro
October 11th, 2010Mark Canavarro is a San Diego based office furniture dealer that has been working with eBoost Consulting on marketing his office furniture and generating him leads for the last 5 years. The relationship has been so vital to Mark’s success of his company that he took the time to share his story with fellow office furniture dealers on what marketing office furniture online can do for them. To learn more about Mark and the marketing programs please visit http://www.officefurnituremarketing.com
Why is Pay-Per-Click Important to Office Furniture Dealers?
October 7th, 2010It’s important for an office furniture dealer to rank well in the organic listings. Organic listings are highly trusted by consumers and get more traffic than paid results when they are listed on the same page. However, before you decide to pour your life savings into Search Engine Optimization (SEO) alone, let’s look at a few reasons to why Paid Search / Pay-per-click (PPC) has a place in every marketing mix.
• Time: With PPC you have the ability to implement a campaign and start getting traffic as soon as just a few minutes after your company’s account is activated. Something is going to need to fill in the gap between when you start working on your SEO and when it actually starts working and bringing in traffic. In addition to balancing your long term and short term goals, PPC has a fast reaction time. Need to create urgency to clear inventory? You can put dates of your sale or event right into your ad copy and get people on the site quickly. You can create campaigns around events in a short time and write the ad copy to compel your potential customer to click through to your website.
• Control: PPC gives you a very high level of control over who is being invited to view your site, as well as what their first impression of your company is. You can avoid the customers who only want home office furniture just by leaving out terms they would be likely to search for, or going as far as to add negative keywords to your account to ensure no one ends up on your site that isn’t likely to end up in a lead or sale for you that is worth your time.
• Conversion Rates: PPC has a lower click through rate when it shares a page with an organic listing for the same company; however it has a higher conversion rate. People who click on the paid ads are more often further along in the buying cycle and have gotten a lot of their purchase research out of the way already. When paired with SEO, PPC will provide you less traffic, but more of those visitors will turn into a more qualified lead.
• Exposure: With PPC your ability to be seen for search results is only limited by your imagination, and of course your budget. You can list thousands of keywords for a site that may only be able to target less than 100 using SEO. This widens your audience exponentially and helps fill the gaps your SEO efforts are unable to cover.
• Targeting: Paid Search allows you very specific targeting. SEO can target local customers by using geographical modifiers and attempting to rank for the terms as a whole. PPC allows you to use that tactic, combined with geo targeting so specific you can target just a 1 miles radius of your location or the whole world. You can choose times of day to bid more or less, change the language, or even set demographic requirements for your searches. That’s a level of targeting that SEO can’t compete with.
With Paid Search not only will you be getting more exposure to searchers looking for your products, but your brand will be getting more exposure in general. As in traditional media, a user needs 5-7 exposures to your brand name or product for them to remember it and for advertising to no longer have an effect on their purchase decision. If they only do a few searches, you have the chance to get two of those exposures per search when you are utilizing both PPC and SEO.
Why is SEO Important to Office Furniture Dealers?
September 10th, 2010SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for the office furniture industry is becoming more competitive by the day because more dealers are seeing the Return On Investment they get when they invest in SEO. Why is SEO so important though? These statistics and reasons below will answer this very common question.
SEO Industry Growth
By: Evan LaGasse, Consultant, eBoost Consulting
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is poised to take a big leap forward – and soon. In a recent Forbes.com survey of Senior‐level marketing executives, SEO was named the #1 most effective online marketing tactic for increasing conversions (inbound leads). A joint study by Econsultancy and Guava showed 86% of marketers planned on either increasing SEO spending or staying steady, despite the current economic climate. So why is SEO so in demand? There are several unique and powerful factors working in its favor:
• Trust: Consumers have an extremely high level of trust for organic search results.
According to studies, 85% of searchers click organic results exclusively (while only 15%
click the sponsored ads along the top and right of search results pages). Most forms of
advertising (including TV ads, online banner ads etc.) are met with initial skepticism and
must fight an uphill battle to gain a consumer’s trust and ultimately their dollar. A web
page that is ranked #1 in Google, on the other hand, is often assumed to be a high‐trust
source right from the beginning.
• No Per‐Click Costs: We all know by now that SEO is not “free” – whether it be time or
money, you have to expend resources to succeed in SEO – but it does not carry the added
hard costs associated with other marketing initiatives. Email has CPM costs which
increase the overall expenditure with every new email sent. Pay Per Click Marketing is
aptly named – every time a user clicks, the advertiser pays. Online display advertising
comes with a per‐impression, per‐click, or per‐sale cost. With SEO, on the other hand,
while the hard work it takes to get results may cost resources, the actual clicks,
impressions, and sales are free.
• Targeted Traffic: Google did not get to the top of the search game by serving its users
irrelevant search results. Search Engines by their very nature generally send highly
targeted traffic your way (the degree to which is determined by the quality of your SEO
strategy). There is no possibility of wasting money on irrelevant keywords (as in PPC) or
un‐targeted impressions (as in online display advertising). If you do happen to rank well
for an irrelevant term, no harm, no foul. But for the most part, the people coming to your
site are going to have a certain level of interest in your site’s content.
SEO combines the best of both worlds from a marketer’s perspective: High user trust and low customer acquisition cost. Any of the initiatives mentioned here can have a positive ROI if done right, but dominating the search game carries certain unique advantages that cannot be found anywhere else in online marketing. Top executives and marketing managers are beginning to realize this and it’s only a matter of time before the budgets match the impact.
To inquire about how you can utilize SEO for your office furniture dealership and increase your sales contact us below:
Presenting at the OFDA Dealer Strategies Conference
September 7th, 2010We have been selected to present an educational seminar to at the 2010 OFDA Dealer Strategies Conference on October 12 at 11:00am.
We are excited to be sharing our expertise with dealers from across the country. It is our goal to educate dealers on the value of online marketing and what it can do for them in regards to Return on Investment and new clients. We have also invited one of our longtime clients, Mark Canavarro the owner of Cubicles Office Environments, to share his experience and thoughts to better relate to the dealers in attendance. The detailed outline of our presentation is below.
Turbocharge Sales Through Internet Lead Generation
Attendees will learn how to:
1.) Build a foundation for a high performing website.
2.) Increase targeted traffic through search engines.
3.) Track and monitor results.
Speakers:
Nick Urbani, Managing Director eBoost Consulting
Jason Kirby, Director of Vertical Operations eBoost Consulting
35 Minute presentation followed by a 25 minute discussion
Presentation Outline:
1.) Building the right foundation.
- Understanding your customers (customer personas)
- i. The Business Owner/Entrepreneur
- ii. The Office Manager
- iii. The Facility Manager
- Improving your website performance
- i. Website Conversion Design
- ii. Positioning content to pre-qualify your leads
- Case Study
2.) Getting Targeted traffic to your website
- PPC – How to target the right customers
- SEO – Building a long term asset
- PPC vs. SEO – What’s the difference
- Case Study
3.) Tracking performance and improving results
- How to track performance through Google Analytics
- Call tracking – The missing link for complete performance tracking
- KPI’s – Key Performance Indicators & industry averages for office furniture companies
- ROI – How to calculate ROI and when a positive ROI can be expected
As you can see, this is going to be a high impact presentation with loads of useful information that can help start generating new business for dealers. We look forward to presenting this topic and if you have any questions regarding the presentation before the event please feel free to leave or comment or call Jason @ (619) 567-3497.
New Marketing Office Furniture Video
August 17th, 2010If you have visited www.officefurnituremarketing.com before then you noticed that there is a more welcoming video that explains to you our process of working with new clients. I created this video to better explain who we are and how you can get started with our online marketing and lead generation program. Having spoken to so many different office furniture dealers I noticed that the most common questions I received were:
“Who are we?”
“Why do we have a lead generation program exclusive to office furniture dealers?”
“How does my company get started with your program?”
Having heard these questions so many times I felt it was necessary to address those concerns with a simple 2 minute video that is right on the homepage. The video is below for you convenience.
We Just Got New Office Furniture
July 21st, 2010Like any other expanding business, we needed new office furniture to accommodate for the new employees we are hiring right now. We went through our long time office furniture client Cubicle Office Environments located here in San Diego to get the work done. COE did a wonderful job planning out the space to spice up our environment. We have a new look and feel that just gets me ramped up and excited every morning I walk in now. The idea of more people and more things going on in the office is always a good sign.
So thank you Cubicle Office Environments and all of the office furniture dealers throughout the country who do a great job at planning out their clients’ space to bring out the best in company.
Below are a couple pics I snapped when the installers came in:
Picture of Cubicle Office Environment’s Truck
Moving stuff in
Beginning the install of 4 new workspaces
The final product.
-Jason
Creating a Strategy for Social Media Marketing: The Methodology
July 13th, 2010Most office furniture dealers start using social media by saying “we should do a blog” or “we should be on twitter or have a Facebook page.” This is not a healthy approach because the objectives are not set before the tools. To help clients with this idea, eBoost Consulting has adopted Forrester Research’s P.O.S.T. method to create a systematic approach to leveraging social technologies.
P – People
• Assess customer’s social activities (see Social Technographics)
• Listen to current conversations about the industry and brand
O – Objectives
• Decide what to accomplish: Listen, Talk, Energize, Support, or Embrace
• Determine if you want to engage with current clients for higher client retention or bring in new customers
S – Strategy
• Plan for how relationships with customers will develop
T- Technology
• Decide which social technologies to use (wiki, forum, social networks, etc.)
Social Technographics
Social Technographics is consumer data that not only looks at just the adoption of individual technologies, but how consumers approach these technologies. This information is vital because it will determine what tools you will have to use and how to set appropriate metrics for monitoring performance of your social media efforts. A ladder is used to show varying levels of participation from adults online:
These six levels of online participation are as follows, starting from the top of the ladder with the most sophisticated category:
1. “Creators”. At the top of the ladder are “Creators” – online customers who publish blogs, maintain web pages, or upload videos to sites like YouTube at least once a month. “Creators” are an elite group, including just 13% of the total adult online population. “Creators” are generally young but are evenly split between men and women. Their participation in creation activities is varied; just 14% do all three activities while another 19% participate in two creator activities.
2. “Critics”. These online consumers participate in either two ways – commenting on blogs or posting ratings and reviews on sites. This level of participation isn’t nearly as intense as being a “Creator” – “Critics” pick and choose where they want to offer their expertise and often use another blog post or product as the foundation for their contribution. “Critics” represent 19% of all adult online consumers.
3. “Collectors”. When users save URLs on a social bookmarking service like del.icio.us or use RSS feeds on Bloglines, they create metadata that’s shared with the entire community. The art of collecting and aggregating information plays a vital role in organizing the tremendous amount of content being produced by “Creators” and “Critics”. “Collectors” represent 15% of the adult online population and are the most male-dominated of all Social Technographic groups.
4. “Joiners”. This unique group has one defining behavior – using a social networking site like MySpace.com or Facebook. “Joiners” represent only 19% of the adult online population and are the youngest of the Social Technographics groups. They are highly likely to engage in other Social Computing activities – 56% read blogs while 30% publish blogs.
5. “Spectators”. This group of blog readers, video reviewers, and podcast listeners, which represents 33% of the adult online population, is important as the audience for the social content made by everyone else. As a group, “Spectators” are slightly more likely to be women and have the lowest household income of all the Social Technographics groups. The most common activity for “Spectators” is reading blogs. Though there may be overlap, in all, 31% of “Spectators” do not engage in “Creator”, “Critic”, “Collector” or “Joiner” activities.
6. “Inactives”. This social technographic group does not participate at all in social computing activities. They are older, above the age of 50, and are more likely to be women and are less likely to consider themselves leaders or tell their friends about products that interest them.
Conclusion:
Would you decide on what furniture to install, where and how to install it without ever talking to the client and determining what is important them? Of course not, and social media marketing should be approached the same way. Following the P.O.S.T. method is going to be vital to any successful social media campaign. It is essential to determine the ‘People’ before you even decide on whether to use Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter and start to allocate resources to executing on social media.
Originally written by:
Johnny Chan
Edited by:
Jason Kirby
